I mentioned in today's OzRant that the markets are
coiling for a rebound. Today's US session was NOT - repeat, NOT - the
start of that rebound. Anyone who goes long on the back of today's US
session is going to wind up wearing their colon around their neck.

You can't say fairer than that... forewarned is forearmed, if
that's the phrase I'm looking for. Today was a coast-to-coast decline
for the US indices.

In other news, our bond short position from some weeks ago is
paying handsomely (after a nasty negative excursion), showing the usual
100% profit on initial futures margin. Yay for me.

Economic News

Economic data was relatively sparse, and the key stuff is not
really part of normal coverage.

First, there have been very large numbers of Municipal Bond Sales that
have failed to find buyers (or have been settled at - get this -
interest rates of up to 20%) . A lot of Muni bond debt is rolled over
at 43-79 day intervals, and it appears that with the lack of faith in
monoline insurers, municipalities that have borrowed heavily (banking
on continued high tax receipts from rising house prices) are going to
go toes-up like Orange County did in the 90s.

Precious Metals

Precious metals futures were broadly up - the surge in
Platinum continues -

Precious Metal Futures

Index

Close

Gain(Loss)

%

Gold

911.7

+1.5

0.16

Silver

1730.0

-5.3

-0.31

Platinum

2015.0

+31.3

1.58

Palladium

440.55

+1.50

0.34

Energy Complex

Crude (and in fact the entire Energy complex) went on a bit of
a tear, despite the news that the surface of Titan has more hydrocarbons than the whole
of our little ball of rock. It is mainly in the form of
ethane and methane, but it still gives just a smidge of support to
the abiotic oil
hypothesis (I've written about that before, but I
remain clueless as to which hypothesis is more valid... but I am sure
that Titan never had forests or dinosaurs...).

Energy Futures

Index

Close

Gain(Loss)

%

Crude Oil

95.45

+2.18

2.34

Heating Oil

2.6670

+0.0514

1.97

Gasoline RBOB

2.4751

+0.0852

3.57

Natural Gas

8.775

+0.387

4.61

Ethanol

2.100

unch

0

Bellwethers

The nine-stock group that makes up the Rant bellwethers
declined on average by 2.2%. The fallout occurred as follows:

General Electric (GE) down $0.59 (1.69%)
to $34.39 on volume of 30.53 million units.

Citigroup (C) down $0.6 (2.28%) to
$25.74 on volume of 58.48 million units.

Wal-Mart (WMT) down $0.69 (1.36%) to
$49.97 on volume of 15.63 million units.

IBM (IBM) down $2.29 (2.11%) to $106.13
on volume of 6.02 million units.

Intel (INTC) down $0.75 (3.54%) to
$20.46 on volume of 70.78 million units.

Cisco Systems (CSCO) down $0.53 (2.2%)
to $23.53 on volume of 54.66 million units.

Google (GOOG) down $2.37 (0.44%) to
$532.25 on volume of 6.46 million units.

Fannie Mae (FNM) down $1.13 (3.59%) to
$30.34 on volume of 7.94 million units.

Freddie Mac (FRE) down $0.86 (2.95%) to
$28.29 on volume of 8.98 million units.